Here is an interesting quote of Michael Paine (who had some substantial discussions with LHO):
"In our arguments I told Lee that all the civilized values I hold dear are diminished
or lost by acts of violence. But he held such human values in contempt, the same
contempt in which he held most human beings."
I found this in CE 460 in case anyone is curious.
Oswald's exchanges with Michael Paine are interesting and the best late evidence (for what it's worth) about his (Oswald's) thinking. Paine said he took Oswald to an ACLU meeting where Oswald got up and talked about the danger from the Bircher radical right. But Oswald was not enamored with the ACLU; he didn't think it was political enough, that it was too passive in working within the US system to affect change. Paine said that one person at the meeting said some favorable things about Castro and Oswald concluded that that person must have been a communist and that he, Oswald, wanted to meet that person later. Paine said that was a silly way of viewing things.
He also said this about Oswald's critical views of America and how it needed to be changed:
Mr. LIEBELER - You had the feeling that whatever it [i.e., Oswald's views on what type of system we should have] was, if in fact he had a notion about it, would have required a drastic and sudden change?
Mr. PAINE - Well, I don't know about the suddeness but he assumed that the society was all tied together, the church and the power structure and our education was all the same vile system and therefore there would have to be an overthrow of the whole thing. Just how he was going to overthrow it or what he was going to overthrow toward--it was not clear to me, especially, because it was also apparent that he didn't particularly admire Russia, so I didn't--I never did get it clear in my mind what program he was going to inaugurate with his new world.
It seem absolutely clear to me in Oswald's comments and writings and behavior that he simply detested the US, the American political and economic systems. Whether he was a Marxist - however that is defined or however he understood it - or not is really secondary to the question of what his views were of his country.
I think all of these claims that his anti-US views were a "legend" or cover story, that he secretly was fighting for the US is just without any foundation. Look at his life; he had a terrible isolated childhood with no stability, he was raised at times in terrible conditions, he was a lost alienated man. There's nothing indicating in any of this a desire to defend a country that exposed him to that.
